Book two, Letter Four (part one of five)

July 23^rd 2018 CE

Dear Cicero,

My hands are like pin cushions. All week I have been amongst the thorn branches of lime trees, the hooks of roses and the needle point tips of Agave cactus. This winter continues to be very dry, the result of which is that I am getting a lot of work done at the farm and around my home, pruning trees, pruning shrubs, building walls, and now my hands bear the marks of their use. Yet today's weather bears all the marks of an impending thunderstorm, and the aroma of approaching rain is carried to me on tumultuous winds from the west.

I must apologise, Cicero, for an error in my last letter to you regarding dates as to your being in Rome in 45 BCE when Caesar marched in Triumph through the city. I thought perhaps that you and Tullia may have been there, but I read today that was not the case, for Tullia died in February of that year. Having given birth to a son, (Cornelius I think), Tullia fell ill, seemed to recover, but died from further complications. I cannot find anything in your letters regarding her son, other than a provision being made for him in your will, so historians assume that the child must have died as well. We don't know.

It was not until September that Caesar marched into the city, and by that time Cicero, you were far away, buried in grief amidst your books and finding nothing there to console you, for as you say in a letter to your best friend Atticus, “Reading and writing do not soften it, but they deaden it.” We still have some of what you wrote during this time of grief, fragments of your treatise On Consolation are extant. I shall seek them out and read them. I want to understand, for I have daughters of my own, living wonders of beauty and delight. The thought of their death....well, I can only imagine the insulting proposition that anything could console me in my grief if either of them died.

So I am sorry to have raised such a delightful hope in my imagination. For if Tullia had lived, she might been there to see the giraffe with you, the two of you might have gone to Athens to be with your own adult son, Marcus. If...if....

I have just finished reading your treatise “On Friendship”, written only one year after Tullia's death, while you hid yourself away in your Tusculan villa, so there are a few things I would like to discuss about that, but I have also been listening to your speeches against your arch enemy, Mark Antony.

The speeches known as the Philippics.

You and I seem to share a passion for invective and knife work in oratory, and you certainly could not have hoped for a more villainous enemy, worthy of your skill with the intellectual carving knife, than Mark Antony. I know that he killed you for it, but that only proves my point about your skills, and unfortunately, also proves your passion. For you could not let go of your hatred of him, and in the end..well...I am not here to judge you, but you did write fourteen speeches against him. You couldn't let go it seems, and your love of the Republic was such that you could never stand to see him in a position of power over Rome. Rome whom you loved as your child. Perhaps it gives you some satisfaction to know that Antony did not survive long, and that he killed himself rather than submit to justice. Perhaps this angers you even more though, to know that he managed to escape criminal conviction even in defeat and death.

It is not popular these days to speak of one's enemies, a grammatical convention that is, I think, connected to the way we don't declare war either. Politicians declare a war on drugs, a war on homelessness, a war on terrorism, but these are flimsy hot air declamations, unrelated to actual war. Yet, despite our soldiers fighting in many countries that would still seem familiar to you Cicero, we are not at war. Missiles and guns and artillery are being fired, soldiers and civilians are dying, cities are burning, yet we are not at war. We are involved in foreign conflicts, in civil unrest, in counter terrorist activities. Am I ignorant of the difference between war and conflict? I always consider that any confusion I feel might arise from the ignorance of my own questions. Nothing can derail one's quest for truth like a misleading presumption, or an ill phrased query.

But...

My great-grandfather fought in the first world war, one hundred years ago. He also fought in the second world war. Both my grandfather's fought in the second world war. My father served in the army, but was not deployed to any combat zones, as he served during the late nineteen seventies and early eighties, after the Vietnam war. My uncle Stephen served for decades with the transport division. He has recently had his book published, on the history of Australian Army traditions and culture.

Stephen Taubert's Book

I have never served in the military, and have no expectations to ever do so. I have, however, been taught how to handle, maintain and fire a rifle, a skill passed down to me by my father, with whom I went rabbit hunting in my youth. I am now thirty eight years old, and throughout my entire life I have seen my country involved in fighting in many foreign countries, yet never in my lifetime has this continental/island nation of Australia been directly threatened or invaded.

I have been reflecting on something I said to you Cicero, in a previous letter. I listed the major wars, rebellions and foreign conflicts that occurred during your lifetime, thinking it a long list, and considering that it represented a time of terrible unrest for Rome. But now that I consider my own, short, modern living experience, it seems to me to be the same as in your time. Great Wars have been fought in the past, great enemies defeated, yet conflict looms ahead like a tidal wave we fear will destroy us all. But people compare our time with yours all the time, and these comparisons are as misleading as they might be helpful, so, this little reflection of our two societies should be kept in its proper regard.

It is a thought. Nothing more.

(end part one of five)